1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to telecommunications, and in particular, to location based format selection for telecommunication information services.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Telecommunication service providers increasingly offer specialized dialing services to customers. For example, some providers offer customers information services related to particular events. A customer can dial a specialized phone number for an event and their provider will connect the customer to a service that provides information related to the event. A typical information service often times includes a media unit that plays out an audio information stream to a customer over a bearer connection. In such a case, the connection between the customer handset and the media unit requires a bandwidth amount similar to any comparative voice call. Information services for sporting events, such as auto races, have become very popular.
One drawback from the perspective of a service provider is that a large number of customers could call a single information service nearly simultaneously and from a single location. In the case of wireless telecommunications, a large volume of calls to an information service could overwhelm the portion of a wireless network serving the location.
In the prior art, one solution to the above problem is to temporarily increase wireless capacity at certain venues or locations around the time of a popular event. In this manner, the bandwidth will exist to service a large number of information service calls from a particular location, in addition to any regular voice calls. Unfortunately, provisioning and deploying temporary service equipment is expensive and inefficient. Regardless, the actual bandwidth demand could still exceed that provided by temporary equipment.
Another solution in the prior art is to block any call that could cause the total bandwidth in-use to exceed the bandwidth capacity of the network. However, blocking a call regardless of whether the call is a voice call or an information service call could result in customer dissatisfaction. In addition, monitoring the available bandwidth of a wireless network on a per-call basis could be overly onerous.